Management of recurrent venous thromboembolism

We have described our current criteria for selecting those patients with acute V T-E who merit long-term protection, for accomplishing the acute to long-term transition efficiently and for deciding when such protection can be interrupted. Naturally, in individual patients, special circumstances may exist which alter these decisions. Also, it is evident that additional studies are needed so that this sequence of decision-making can be improved. Our current approach contains a number of rather arbitrary components. Furthermore, if effective thrombolytic therapy does become available, we will need to reevaluate current criteria for long-term protection from recurrence.